Al Iverson’s Spam Resource

I'm not quite sure who Wonderland Collective are, but when somebody asked them why they are sending unsolicited email, they decided to complain back, instead of apologizing.

But wait, there's more! Be sure to read the whole thread. I sort of assume at some point they'll be changing their tune and apologizing. Unless they prefer to be blacklisted. I wonder if they did something that could get them into enough trouble that they'd even get fined? I'm not sure, as I don't know enough about what's happening here. But sending unsolicited spam, then barking at people who ask you to stop, sure doesn't seem to me like a good way to run a business.

Allow me to add a fifth: Now is not the time to experiment. Don't dig out that old list, triple your volume or decide to warm up a new IP address in the middle of the season, if you can help it. As WhatCounts suggests in tip #3, some things are better addressed before you get here.

Or, to put it another way, now is not the time to do something that might blow up your sending reputation.

ISP representatives are getting overwhelmed for requests for remediation and have holiday vacations planned, both leading to slow responses. And enough of them are probably tired of people asking for special favors, especially when not really warranted (can you unblock my mail that has really bad stats?), that This Is Not The Time For Funny Stuff. The less your success relies on a human's personal intervention at an ISP, the better off you are.

What is COI/DOI? It's just address validation and permission verification -- you send a welcome or verification message and the recipient has to click on a link to prove they want the subscription. And it's not a new thing, here's me talking about it on this very blog fifteen years ago.

Note: I think the terms "double opt-in" and "confirmed opt-in" are interchangeable. I find that most of the time, internet security and anti-spam folks call it COI, and marketers and some deliverability folks (like me!) call it DOI. When doing so, they refer to the same process of requiring an active response to the initial welcome or verification email.

There are a lot of good reasons to implement COI/DOI, but today's specific question is -- does Germany "require" it? Ultimately this is a legal question, and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not qualified to answer legal questions. But I can share and link to what other folks have said on this topic, so that's what I will do.

First, Litmus has this excellent article on international opt-in requirements that they published in 2016. They say: "German courts have decided that a single opt-in process is not sufficient proof of prior consent. They argue that a person other than the owner of an email could have entered the address in a form. Even though there is no law that explicitly requires a double opt-in in Germany, 45% of German brands have adopted this process as best practice—just to be on the safe side."

I am told that the case law referenced in the Litmus article is a good place to start for understanding where the COI/DOI requirement comes from. If you can speak the language, I suggest diving into the linked Teradata case study for more information.

This 2012 article from the German E-Mail Marketing Tipps blog may be getting a bit dusty, but suggests a similar answer: "Double opt-in is not legally mandated in Germany. But it is recommended in many scenarios. Without a well-documented DOI you may not be able to prove permission, depending on the judge."

And finally, what do ISPs say? Here's one example of a reply from a German-based ISP that a friend was kind enough to share with me. The ISP said, "As you surely know the sender needs to have recipients Double-Opt-in/Closed-Loop-Opt-in confirmed before mailing to German residents to comply with the German Bundesdatenschutzgesetz."

Got any additional information or links to share? Feel free to leave information in comments below.

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